Before getting on to regular Right Turn Only business, Carlo Santos ponders the publishing fate of Osamu Tezuka in the world of licensed manga:
“How is it that the most dependable producer of Tezuka’s work (in America) is a boutique literary publisher that’s targeted way above the heads of the kids who SHOULD be reading his stuff?”
It’s a reasonable question, and it leads Chloe at Schuchaku East to suggest the following:
“Granted, Princess Knight, Pheonix, Kimba- these are classics, why aren’t they making it to the masses? Well, for one, they’re a bit aged, and second, as thrilled as manga commentators would be to get their hands on a copy, manga remains a mass market industry aimed largely at preteens and teens.”
It is a weird conundrum. On the one hand, Tezuka was constantly exploring different genres and reaching out to different audiences, so his stuff for older audiences is as much a part of his legacy as his stuff for kids. I don’t think it necessarily does a disservice to his legacy to make the mature-audience stuff available and package it for that audience. Tezuka was all about comics for people at every stage of life, and I don’t think that means he was all about grandparents reading manga for kids.
At the same time, I’d like someone to pick up Princess Knight because the snippet Viz published was a lot of fun. (Would it be more accurate to call it a suspicion or a hope to say that I think Viz published that excerpt to test the waters and see what kind of demand for more they got from the Shojo Beat audience?) I honestly don’t think his work has aged all that badly, and I wonder if its original target audience – kids – would actually find it dated or kind of weird and cool. (I wouldn’t necessarily want to see it given the ivory tower treatment, though. Just put it in the customary paperback form with the rest of the Shojo Beat line, if it’s going to be done at all.)
It leads me to wonder who these high-end collections of stuff like Peanuts and Moomin and Dennis the Menace are supposed to reach. Obviously, comics connoisseurs enjoy them, but I certainly hope that kids are spending rainy afternoons with them too. I don’t know any kids to ask, and they may look at those tomes and roll their eyes. (Well, I can’t let myself believe they’d do that with Moomin.)
